


it's the end of the world (and you're not invited)

by skyisnothingtobelieve



Category: N.Flying (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Slice of Life, Suicidal Ideation, implicated depression
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-26 14:21:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20743622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyisnothingtobelieve/pseuds/skyisnothingtobelieve
Summary: Jaehyun laughs, and Seunghyub listens.





	it's the end of the world (and you're not invited)

Summer begins like the height of a fever, a wilting sun against a crooked world.

Seunghyub’s dream is filled with warm sweat and rheumatic fingers, out-of-service claw machines and porcelain breaking. He steps on the shards and the blood from his feet soaks into the floorboards and disappears, replaced by the soft collar of a wrinkled shirt and the lonely corner of an unmade bed. Sunlight filters in from behind and the shadows split Seunghyub neatly in half like a badly-lit photograph or a pair of those theater masks that represent ideologies on a weird oppositional disparity: day and night, laughter and sorrow, life and death and all the cracks in between. He stays in this curled-up position, blankets kicked away and half-hanging off the edge of the mattress, until a series of angry knocks jolt him awake.

Rubbing an eye, Seunghyub rolls over onto his side and the first thing he sees are peeling olive walls and Jaehyun’s shit-eating grin outside his door screen. A pink film of sunset light coming through glass casts an uncanny glow over Jaehyun’s shoulder in a fit of twilight delusion, wings made of the late afternoon sky—Icarus’ throwaway pair. It makes him look older than just any ordinary teenage boy.

Seunghyub had been nodding off for a while now, drifting forward for a second or two before rudely snapping his neck backward in a vicious cycle of trying to stay awake. He’d tried occupying himself with the ancient analog TV across the room but there was nothing worth looking at, just words and moving images and unrecognizable faces thrown together into a futile mass of pretending to mean something. It bored him to death.

Once upon a time, that TV had been a magic portal. Seunghyub would spend hours upon hours watching dinosaurs and fairies and cartoon characters more real than anyone Seunghyub’s ever known. Except Kim Jaehyun, who’d always been there right beside him, a superhero in the flesh. Jaehyun who was younger but sometimes played with the bigger kids. Jaehyun who’d learned to ride a motorcycle when he was nine to cover for his aunt’s restaurant because the last three delivery boys had stolen from the cash register and run off. Jaehyun who can understand what Seunghyub wants to say without ever meaning to, Jaehyun who’s wide-eyed and afraid of anything with legs, Jaehyun who’s at the bottom of his class but always seems to know what no-one else really knows. Jaehyun who’s brave and at ease with the world but at the same time so thoughtful and meticulous with everything around him, as if he’s afraid it’ll all come apart beneath his fingers, turned to clockwork dust.

Now, Kim Jaehyun’s all knuckles threaded between chain-linked fences, the shoelaces on one sneaker untied. This early into the evening he’s already made off with the invisible things of June, sleeves gummed up with melting tarmac and a bagful of cicada cries. Looping his legs around the side of Seunghyub’s apartment complex, he’d slung over the cheap potted plants and onto the inadequate third-floor balcony of a middle-class residence in Yeonnam-dong. Among the telephone pole whispers and concrete tile touches, the only indication of his existence is half a footprint dusted off the face of a freshly-painted wall.

The first thing Jaehyun does when Seunghyub lets him inside is complain about the heat and with an alarmed glance at the clock by his bedside Seunghyub is hit with the realization that Jaehyun’s probably been outside for at least twenty minutes.

“You should’ve woken me up earlier,” Seunghyub says all too fast—and regrets it immediately, because he’d been the one to lay down the timetable for seven o’ clock sharp and even spent all morning making Jaehyun promise he’d be on time. It’s 7:30 now and what’s worse is he also knows Seunghyub could’ve pounded on the glass screen until he’d woken up but instead chose to let him sleep, squatting outside in the stuffy summer air with only mosquitoes for company.

“There’s drool on your chin,” is all Jaehyun says, gesturing for him to wipe it off and Seunghyub raises a finger to brush at exactly where Jaehyun is pointing. There’s nothing there and Seunghyub frowns.

“Gotcha,” Jaehyun stuffs a sweaty hand into a pocket and that’s how Seunghyub remembers him best, would like to remember him forever—back against the sunset, hands in pockets, looking away. 

**Author's Note:**

> old! fic, rewritten and redeveloped. the original has been taken down
> 
> find me on @ttungttunghano1 on Twitter I talk about N.Flying


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